The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  “I know it’s hard to process. But this isn’t the end of anything; it’s the beginning. At this point, he’s only under arrest.” I saw no point in telling them that a senior ADA had already made up his mind about Jack’s guilt. “From what I can tell, a large part of whatever evidence they have right now is based on motive. One of this morning’s victims was Malcolm Neeley.”

  Buckley sucked in her breath at the mention of his name. She and Charlotte simultaneously launched into the same arguments I had raised at the precinct—that suing someone wasn’t the same as wanting to kill him, that other people blamed Neeley for his son’s actions just as much as Jack did.

  I cleared my throat to interrupt. “There’s a complication.” I didn’t want to run the risk of them learning about the GSR evidence on the news. In dry, clinical language, I explained the process for testing for gunshot residue on a person’s clothing. “I’m told the test came back positive.”

  Buckley fell back against the sofa, all the fight in her suddenly gone. Charlotte threw me a sharp look. So much for wanting me to give it to the kid straight.

  THE GRANITE ISLAND IN CHARLOTTE’S kitchen resembled the set of a cooking show, covered by an array of fresh ingredients, already chopped and measured, waiting to be assembled. I wondered if she’d done the preparations herself or had a chef for that.

  “You realize you basically just told that girl you think her father’s guilty?”

  I could tell she wanted to yell, but didn’t want Buckley to hear us from the den. “You’re the one who said she was an old soul.”

  “That’s because I didn’t think you’d pull a total mind fuck on her. I treat Buckley the way I do to make up for all the tiptoeing everyone else has done around her since her mother died. She needs at least one person in her life who doesn’t act like she’s made of glass.”

  “Jack said she could be sensitive.”

  “No shit, Olivia. Some kid shot her mother at random. Kind of shakes your faith in the world, don’t you think?” Perhaps realizing there was no point to this conversation, Charlotte shifted the conversation back to Jack’s arrest. “So someone actually killed that asshole Malcolm Neeley?”

  “According to the police. And I don’t see why they’d lie about it.”

  “And two bystanders?” she asked.

  “At least the way they describe it.”

  “How can they know he was the target and not one of the other two? Or it could have been totally random.”

  “Except for the fact that Jack just happened to be in the area at the time of the shooting and had gunshot residue on his shirt.”

  “Well, obviously those stupid test results are wrong.” She picked up a dice of radish from one of the carefully arranged Pyrex cups and popped it in her mouth. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you do now? Get stuff like that thrown out? I can pay you, by the way. Your full fee. I want to help Jack however I can.”

  “It’s not about the money, Charlotte. I would hope you’d at least trust me on that.”

  “Really? I should trust you?”

  “As a lawyer. Yes, you should, or I should leave right now.”

  She shrugged. “My point is, we’ll get an expert. A whole team. Poof—gone goes the bogus test result.”

  “It’s not that easy.” I knew the standard ways to challenge the evidence—where police did the testing, how they handled the clothing, chain of custody, the involved personnel. But none of that would happen until trial. “I really thought I had this nipped in the bud until those results came back. Charlotte, is there any way—”

  “Hell no, are you kidding me? You know Jack. Not a violent bone in that man’s body. After all, we know from experience how he handles things when his world falls apart.”

  What she meant was, when you made his world fall apart.

  She must have registered my discomfort. “Sorry,” she quickly offered. “My point is, we know for a fact that the only person Jack hurts when he feels lost is himself. He falls apart. It might’ve happened all over again when Molly died, but he had to hang in there for Buckley.”

  “Speaking of Buckley, when she first called my office this morning, she told me that helping Jack was the—quote—least I could do after what I did to her father. How does she even know about me?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Kids hear everything, especially that kid. Not even Molly and Jack were perfect. They argued like any other couple. My guess is your name came up—the omnipresent ex-girlfriend or something.”

  “She knew more than that. What I did to her father?”

  Another shrug. “Trust me, she doesn’t know the whole story, or she wouldn’t have called you. All she knows is that Uncle Owen died in a car accident. Once Jack got his shit together, he vowed never again to blame himself for what happened.”

  Not when there was someone else to blame. I glanced down the hall to make sure that Buckley was still out of earshot.

  “So just how much did Jack despise Malcolm Neeley?”

  “Well, he definitely didn’t sympathize with the guy. Or understand him. Jack is the most devoted father in the world. He’d do anything for Buckley. So imagine how he felt about this prick who knew his kid was a head case, but couldn’t dare get him any help because, of course, no son of his could possibly be imperfect. Instead, he insisted on trying to butch the kid up, pushing him to follow sports and then—lo and behold—the kid likes guns. Yay! Let’s encourage that. Great idea, asshole. So, yeah, Jack wasn’t a fan. But all that means is he’s got neurons firing in his brain. The lawsuit against Neeley wasn’t even his idea. Some of the other families thought of it. He just ended up with more media coverage. You know, with Molly being the one who tried to stop Todd before he opened fire. Plus he’s all squeaky clean and shiny and writes books that win awards. Not to mention the dead-cop brother. He made for good copy.”

  “Speaking of you media types, I need to talk to you about that missed-moment post.”

  She looked taken aback at the sudden change in subject. “How did that come up in conversation?”

  “It’s why he was at the waterfront today.”

  “That’s where he jogs.”

  “I know, but that’s not why he was there. He was there to meet Madeline—the champagne, picnic, book girl.”

  “You mean he was actually going to meet her? I knew they were e-mailing, but he was being pretty hush-hush with the details.”

  “They arranged to meet today. She picked the time and the place. Seven AM this morning, right at the football field.”

  I waited while the implication set in. “And Malcolm Neeley just happens to get killed there a few minutes later?”

  I nodded.

  “So that’s an awfully big coincidence,” she said.

  “Unless it’s not.”

  Chapter 7

  I ASKED CHARLOTTE who Jack might have told about his plans for the morning.

  She shrugged. “If he didn’t even tell me, I can’t imagine that he mentioned it to someone else.”

  “But Madeline could have told anyone. Jack used his real name when he e-mailed her.”

  “And the person she mentions this to just happens to decide to frame Jack for murder? That doesn’t make sense.”

  No, it didn’t, but working through all possible scenarios was the way I processed facts. “If someone wanted to kill Malcolm Neeley, Jack was a prime candidate for a setup. Like you said, he made good copy as Neeley’s number-one enemy.”

  “Damnit. What if I made Jack too identifiable in the missed-moment post? Madeline could be a catfish.”

  “A catfish is like a fake ID?”

  “It’s a lot more than that. It’s the creation of an entire personality. You should see the number of supposedly gorgeous women on Twitter and Facebook who have a thing for fat, ugly geezers. But the person behind the profile is some ex-con in Lithuania. You know how many people have actually fallen in love—like, total, head over heels, quit their jobs and sell their houses to move across the country,
in love—with someone who doesn’t even exist? Sometimes it’s just to screw with a person. Usually it’s to take their money. But here maybe they’re catfishing for a fall guy.”

  “I don’t think I’m following.”

  “Okay, suppose someone wants to kill Neeley. They’re thinking they can make it look like one of the Penn Station family members did it. Then they see the missed-moment post, realize I’m talking about Jack, and make up a woman named Madeline to rope him in.”

  “And they just happen to know Jack’s favorite book?”

  “Easy,” she said. She walked over to a nook in the corner of the kitchen, and came back with an iPad. She used Siri’s microphone to search for “Jack Harris Eight Days to Die,” tapped the screen a couple of times, and pushed the tablet in my direction.

  It was an author Q and A from the website goodreads, posted a month and a half earlier.

  GR: Readers always like to know what their favorite writers have on their nightstands. Do you have any recent favorite reads?

  JH: I always have a nightstand full of books, but I was blown away by last year’s Eight Days to Die by a debut writer named Monica Harding.

  I browsed the rest of his answer—how the book captured New York City so well, how it managed to be uplifting even though it was about a woman scheduling her own death, how his teenage daughter also enjoyed it, and how they had spent an afternoon taking a walking tour of spots featured in the book.

  With a quick Google search, “Madeline” could have known what book she could claim to have been reading once Jack asked the question.

  But then I saw a hole in Charlotte’s theory. “When Madeline responded to the missed-moment post, she knew what shirt Jack had been wearing. She also mentioned the basket. Those details weren’t in the original post you published.”

  “They weren’t?”

  I shook my head.

  She whispered, “Damn,” under her breath. But I wasn’t so ready to give up on her catfish theory. I was still thinking out loud. “What if the actual woman he saw at the pier was also part of the catfish?”

  “That’s not how catfishing works. The whole point is, you don’t need a real person. You just make one up.”

  “Well, set aside the word ‘catfish.’ Maybe the woman he saw at the pier was also part of the setup. She gets all dolled up, trying to get his attention, with the long-term plan being to frame him for Neeley’s murder. But then Jack pulls a Jack. He keeps on running. Doesn’t stop to talk to her. Plan foiled. Until your post.”

  I saw Charlotte’s face fall.

  “No, not like that,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. But are you following me? That makes sense, right?” Seduce Jack. Kill Neeley. Frame Jack. The seduction just took a different form than originally planned.

  Charlotte nodded. “Jack’s a creature of habit. He runs that route every single morning. She’d know where to wait for him.”

  Her comment raised another problem with my theory. “But pretty women are a dime a dozen. How could anyone know that this particular one would get Jack’s attention?”

  Charlotte’s face suddenly brightened. “One of the pieces I wrote about Molly for the Room mentioned how she and Jack met. Jack saw Molly reading alone in a wine bar. Brainy, happy in her own head, confident enough to sit by herself, didn’t need a man to define her.” With each new attribute, it was becoming increasingly clear that Molly had won over Charlotte’s approval in a way I never had. I had followed enough of the media coverage about the shooting to know that Charlotte had played a role in shaping Jack’s public image after the shooting. And I specifically remembered the piece she was talking about now. I remembered it because I remembered feeling pathetic for being jealous of a dead woman.

  I focused again on the matter at hand. “Did the woman in the grass”—that’s what we were calling her now—“look like Molly?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Jack didn’t really say much about her physical appearance, just that she was pretty, I think. He was more drawn to her energy or whatever. It was a setup, I’m telling you. They mined the Web for info on Jack and used it to plant the perfect woman on his running route.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s so—elaborate.”

  “That’s nothing compared to some of the catfish stories we’ve covered. It would help if we could find the girl. My guess is, she’s not involved. She’s just the eye candy. They could have hired an actress, or a call girl. Can you get video footage from the city?”

  “Maybe. I mean, there’s no guarantee she’ll be on camera, but, yeah, I can request it.”

  I called the district attorney’s office, asked for Scott Temple, and told him I was worried that he was cherry-picking the video evidence from the waterfront. “Make sure you preserve everything. And not just from today. I want the last month, the entire south waterfront.”

  Once I was off the phone, I summed up the other side of the conversation for Charlotte. “He didn’t make any promises, but at least he’s on notice not to erase anything. A picture of the woman would help. It would show that Jack’s not making this whole thing up.”

  “I can do a lot with a picture. Pop that baby up on the Room, and the armchair detectives will go nuts. We’ll have Madeline’s identity in no time.”

  Charlotte was so busy outlining her plans for a photograph we didn’t have that neither of us noticed a third person lingering in the entrance to the kitchen. Buckley was staring at us, a laptop in her hands, Daisy the pug trailing her feet. “You guys are making this way too complicated.”

  “How much did you hear?” Charlotte asked.

  “Enough to know that there’s a much simpler explanation.”

  BUCKLEY SET HER LAPTOP ON the island while she explained. “You said no one could have known all the details unless they were actually at the piers that morning. But that’s not true. They just needed access to his e-mail.”

  She tilted the laptop screen in our direction.

  FROM: jacksonharris@gmail.com

  TO: charlotte.caperton@roommag.com

  DATE: June 6, 2015 11:47 PM

  Subject: Weird thing

  Hey. Too late to call, and I don’t think I’d tell you this anyway unless I wrote it all down. Weird thing happened on my run today. Saw this woman at Christopher St. Pier. She was wearing a strapless gown and had a picnic basket to herself at 6:30 in the morning. She was carefree, sitting on the grass and reading a book, which reminded me of Molly. And she had long dark hair and was drinking champagne right out of the bottle, which reminded me of—well, you know who, but don’t like it when I mention her name.

  My point is that I’m lying here in bed 18 hours later and am still thinking about her. You always remind me that there are—what’s the number? 2.2 million age-appropriate women for me within New York City alone? I am starting to imagine the possibility that at least one of them might be worth meeting. Maybe you can even help me set up an online dating account. JK—don’t you dare.

  Oh, and get this: smooth operator here was wearing that T-shirt B gave me for Christmas. That’s right: World’s Okayest Runner. How can the ladies resist me?

  Anyway, no matter who I might end up with in my life, my favorite women will always be you and Buckley.

  “See?” Buckley said. “It’s all right there. Like you said, Dad’s the perfect fall guy. If they hacked his e-mails, they’d have everything they’d need to respond to the missed-moment post.”

  Buckley was sounding awfully proud of herself for coming up with a theory I had missed. I suspected it had something to do with her father’s mention of someone from his past with long dark hair. I fit the bill.

  “Told you she was smart,” Charlotte said. “Now we just need to find out who was snooping in Jack’s mailbox.”

  “You might want to start by taking a look at that.” Buckley gestured toward the open laptop.

  I blinked twice before speaking. “You’re telling me this computer is your father’s?”
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br />   Buckley didn’t blink. “Yeah, I picked it up when the police weren’t looking.”

  EINER SHOWED UP AT CHARLOTTE’S front door twenty minutes later. Just as his first and last names would suggest, Einer was half Swedish, half German, making his puffy red hair all the more surprising. Though Einer’s coif was always slightly Bozo-like, the day’s humidity had left it looking like an oversize, carrot-colored Q-tip abandoned at the bottom of a suitcase for too long.

  Charlotte and Buckley were with me in the entryway when I let him in, but he didn’t bother with introductions. “Are you trying to get us both fired? Don’s been riding my ass all day, asking me where you are, making me promise to loop him in. I don’t know what you’re working on, or why Don’s pissed, but I feel like one of those little kids caught in the middle of their parents’ divorce.”

  Coming up for air, he registered the presence of a teenager and the small dog smelling his pant leg, and looked at me as if I’d led him into an Ebola outbreak.

  He followed us into the kitchen, where Jack’s laptop was awaiting his magic touch. “I need to know if someone hacked into an e-mail sent from this computer.” According to Buckley, Jack primarily used the desktop computer in his home office for writing. He generally used his laptop for research and e-mails. The idea was to associate one computer exclusively with his manuscripts to avoid online distractions. For now, we were assuming that Jack used his laptop to e-mail Charlotte about the woman in the grass.

  Einer took a seat and started clicking away, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his brow furrowed. He threw me an annoyed look when Buckley got a little too close, peering over his shoulder.

  I decided to distract her with a discussion I’d been postponing until now, hoping that Charlotte might be the one to raise it first. “So, Buckley, are we going to talk about why you took your dad’s laptop while the police were at your apartment with a search warrant?”